"You are right," agreed Mr. Blackdeed. "The incident was pre-eminently dramatic; just suited to the stage, and would certainly bring down the house. I intend to dramatise it at my earliest convenience."
"And how is our patient, Dame Hearty?" enquired Dr. Bleedem of our hostess, who was waiting upon the members at table this morning instead of her daughter.
"Still very feverish, doctor," was the reply. "The poor child has caught a dreadful cold from being turned out of her warm bed and carried into the cold night air and the snow by those ruffians, and she with scarce a stitch of clothing on."
"Poor dear!" cried Dr. Bleedem, compassionately. "I'll come and see how she is getting on after breakfast."
"Why, doctor," observed Mr. Crucible, "you've got your work pretty well cut out for you. There's his lordship—well, you can dissect him; and his man, too, for the matter of that. Then there's the coachman, who was brought back here in his lordship's carriage early this morning, with his shoulder-blade broken; then the horses, with their knees broken: and now it's our sweet Helen——"
"Say, doctor," broke in Professor Cyanite, "was that rascally bully sufficiently conscious before his death to give an account of himself?"
"Oh, yes, he was conscious, though he hadn't time to say much. I saw from the first that the case was fatal. He admitted that he had been a d——d scoundrel, but added that his lordship was every whit as bad—and worse. He alleged that had he taken a situation as servant under an honest man, instead of entering the service of an unprincipled rake and debauchee like Lord Scampford, that he himself might have become an honest man. He showed some contrition for the part he had played last night, and begged me to ask the lady's forgiveness for the same, as well as to pray for his soul. Then his mind seemed to wander, and he called out: 'There's his lordship! I see him enveloped in a sheet of flame, with fire issuing from his eyes and mouth, and from the tips of his fingers. He is beckoning to me! He is calling me down to Hell! How horrible the forms that hover round me. Mercy! mercy! Oh! my God,' Here he uttered a despairing groan, and spoke no more."
"Ha! Quite dramatic again," remarked the tragedian, who had no thought but what had reference to the stage; "the repentant sinner on his death-bed—excellent! I will take a note of that, and introduce it into my next play."
"Then there is the rescuer; you forget him," observed the poet. "The mysterious stranger, with cloak and slouched hat, appearing on the spot in the very nick of time to succour Beauty in distress."
"True, true," assented the tragedian; "I had nigh forgot. If this episode wouldn't bring down the house I don't know what would."